1. Field of the Invention:
The present invention relates to a method for transferring thermally a hot-melt transparent protective material on a recording medium, a card for instance, after the card is printed with various information such as a person's portrait, name, code and the like thereon by a card publishing system for publishing such cards as ID cards for identification of employee or student, or cash dispensing cards to be published from banks or multipurpose IC embedded cards (hereinafter referred to as a "cards C").
2. Description of the Related Art:
Lately a card publishing system for preparing a desired image on a recording medium to be used as a card by a thermal transfer printer using no photographic papers has been developed. A card production system disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 22693/1988 is shown in FIG. 1 as an example of the card publishing system.
Referring now to FIG. 1, image data inputted by an image pickup means 101, a TV camera for example, is stored in a memory 105 through a data processor 104. The stored image data is then displayed on a display 102 through the data processor 104.
A position data inputting means 103 for inputting position data manipulating a mouse, or a tablet digitizer and the like, is connected with the data processor 104 to input position data related to the displayed image on the display 102.
A character data inputting means 106 such as a keyboard or an optical character reader (OCR) is provided for inputting character data.
The image data is processed in a variety of ways by these devices and is then converted to printable image data by a data converter 107. The printable image data is then outputted to a thermal head 109 through a driver 108 of a thermal transfer sublimation type printer, for example, and is printed on a card C by means of an ink sheet T.
However, the image printed on the card C by the card production system shown in FIG. 1 is in a state where ink of the ink sheet T has been merely transferred to the surface of card C. Accordingly there have been such problems that this ink is easily discolored by ultra violet ray and the like, that is the card C lacks durability against frequent use, and that no anti-tampering means is provided even when, for example, a corporate seal and a signature are printed on the card.
While methods for applying a protective transparent film on the surface of a printed material by heating and pressing the film thereon have been disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 102380/1982 and Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 147390/1983, the method has such a disadvantage that it requires so complex system that the production cost and the running cost for the production of the cards are high.